


The God of Ocean Tides

by seraphim_grace



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-13
Updated: 2016-12-13
Packaged: 2018-09-08 09:13:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8838904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraphim_grace/pseuds/seraphim_grace
Summary: After Charleston Billy must go to see his captain.“We are born in the waterNow we return to Thee.”





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [darkmagess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkmagess/gifts).
  * Inspired by [XVIII Coda - That Hollow Place](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7298767) by [darkmagess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkmagess/pseuds/darkmagess). 



Charleston stains the early sunset pink and orange, the sky thick with clouds and the lingering tongues of fires that are yet to be extinguished. The smoke lies on the harbour like a fog as Billy stands on the foc’s’le watching it burn.

His skin feels gritty. He scrubs his hand over his shaved head, and lets out a breath he did not know he was holding with a rough grunt, and it is like he has been a rope tied taut that has just been cut, and he thinks that his legs will buckle under him.

This is everything he feared and more.

There is a hundred emotions battling within him, he feels like all the sailors he has known, lost to the waters, are rising out of the ocean to claw at his feet, to bring him down into the calm waters for what he has done, for the kindnesses he offered them, because it is all they have to offer him. He feels their fingers at his thighs, but he can't let them take him. Water floods his mouth. It is the bony fingers of the dead that hold him aloft when he wants nothing more than to pitch himself over the rail.

Below decks Silver is spread over a table with the surgeon doing his best.

Silver did it for them. He did it for Billy.

He did it for Billy.

Only the dead held Billy aloft when he stumbled.

The boards were still slick with blood, it would have to be scrubbed before the stain set, he would have to get O’Malley on to it.

Billy wavered for a moment- like he was buffeted by a strong wind. O’Malley was gone.

The world as he knew it was a fluid thing, changing with the tides, subject to storm and doldrums. He had had one fixed point for so long and now that was revealed not as a mainmast but a shattered broken thing doomed to pull them under.

Flint had come on board, back to back with Vane, a wild animal snarling and snapping and armed with steel. There was a smear of blood across his neck like it had been slit. He had looked feral. More terrifying than the devil himself.

In Nassau, they staged mock trials, and one of the whores would descend for the victim dressed as Maman Brigitte, naked but for her black veil and her painted skull face covered by a fall of black beads.

The first time Billy saw it he had thought he would piss himself in fear, as black fingers painted white like bones trailed across his shoulders going to the judged.

That same fear coiled in his gut looking at his captain.

Vane was a wild man. Blunt faced and hard bodied like he was roughly carved from wood, like a figurehead come to life and given steel, but Flint, Flint had been smooth and polished. He had schemes and plans, fearless but resolute. His barbarities were judged and found necessary, there was nothing wasted in the flow of motion.

In his place, in his clothes, was a snarling demon, black skinned and red haired and stained with blood and powder.

He had stood on the deck, the rope ladder still swinging behind him and he had laughed and it sounded like the howl of a mourner or a wild beast.

And suddenly Billy was that boy again in the inn in Nassau as Maman Brigitte descended the stairs to trail her fingers along his shoulders and arms.

With Silver on the surgeon's table, it falls to Billy to be the bridge between the captain and crew. The captain controls the ship, but the crew controls themselves and it falls to the Quartermaster to bridge the gap.

But who could understand the feral beast their captain has become. It falls to Billy to lever himself from the fo’c’sle and go to his cabin, and the fingers of the dead coil around his legs and the fingers of Maman Brigitte are dragging across his shoulders.

He is the quartermaster, he says to himself, it's one of those lies he told himself on the shore in the leather vest with the navy looking down. "I am a crewman on the Walrus. Captain Flint is doing what is best for Nassau. I am an instrument of his will.”

He repeats it as he descends the steps, hoping no one sees how he grips the rail for balance. The dead are tugging at him, and he feels his stomach high in the back of his throat, and his scalp feels alive with imagined lice.

I am a crewman on the walrus. But he can almost see the fingers of his dead companions on his waistband. Captain Flint is doing what is best for Nassau. Maman Brigitte drags her fingers along his arm leaving a trail of ice in their wake. I am an instrument of his will.

He opens the door to the captain's cabin with a prayer on his lips to the god of ocean tides.

_“We are born in the water now we return to Thee.”_

 


End file.
